|
|
|
|
The Siris Habitat |
|
The Siris Habitat - Data Panel
Definition: subversive peripatetic relativistic fractal habitat / museum-ship Symbol: Wreathed O'Neill habitat against starfield with name 'Siris' written in ancient proto-anglic. Founded: 2396 (Original O'Neill Habitat) Psyche, Art, Culture Metapsychology/Metaethics: Metapsychology: Nano-based, staunchly immortalist, knowledge preserver. Religion/Ideology: Militant Atheism. Religious faith is considered a form of insanity and treated. Archailects are respected as intellectually superior but not considered 'divine' (see Buddhism, Hinayana). Ideology is reminiscent of TRHN, Cyberia; rather eclectic mix of academic, GPL and others, combined with surprising disdain for virtual reality. Culture and Art: Virtual and low-mass. Nanodesign is a popular artform and Siria has produced some of the more innovative templates. Holography is also popular but virches less so. Language: CACC, Douh, Old Anglic. Daily discourse is done in CACC and Old Anglic is used for ceremonial situations. Douh is generally used for external trade. Territory and Population Current Territory: None outside Siris Habitat itself. Capital: Siris Habitat itself. other important systems: None Current non-copy Population: ~300,000 (Constant immigration and emigration) Population Breakdown: 82% nanocyborg; 7% virtual, 6% vec; 5% other (Mainly Baselines. Genetically Sirians are and remain more or less pure human baselines.) Government and Administration Government: AI-mediated cyberdemocracy. Administrative divisions: Military, Internal Security, Resource Management, Astrogation, Education, Research. National holidays: 16 per solar year, determined by consensus and varies. Constitution: Siris Habitat Charter v21.4 Legal system: Trial by Peers. No official judicial corps. Legislation is quite loose by O'Neill standards. Economics, Local Infrastructure Currency: Internal, virtual, cryptographic. Recognized and exchangeable. Major Industries: Nanodesign, tech consulting, information trade, Femtotech Compuforming. Note: This polity possesses advanced femtotech computer capabilities including several large femtotech computronium cores. Major Stargate Plexi: none (permanent microgate datalink to Known Net via Merrion at NoCoZo) Military expenditures - percent of GDP: percent of GDP: 15% (Note that this figure is inflated by inclusion of many multiple-use installations.) Interstellar Trade and Treaty Relations Interstellar treaty organization participation: NoCoZo Tier II, Strangelet ban, Amalgamation Containment Initiative, Perseus Arm Defense Organization, Institute of Survival Associate Membership, Encyclopaedia Galactica Institute Associate Membership Exports - commodities: Technological data, picotech modules, nanotech templates, photonano drexborging (See SNARE), bodymods, consultation services, ascension services, Data Storage Services, femtotech computronium. Exports - partners: Non-Coercive Zone, Keter Domain, Terran Federation, Technorapture Hypernation, any Imports - commodities: Exotic matter, femtotech products, raw elements, non-nanofactured ('natural' or 'original') luxuries. Imports - partners: any Longrunning Interstellar Disputes:
|
|
Extract from Journals
of an Interstellar Wanderer
As the shuttle approached on trajectory designed to get the passengers a good look of their destination, I finally partially understood the desire of these people to tread the new and unknown while simultaneously retaining knowledge and touch of their roots. Ultratech and it's use was evident on slick bias drive and fractal-matter structure of habitat itself, but the evidence of maintaining ancient connections equally strong with habitat logo straight out of Earth's interplanetary age embossed on smart-matter structure, just outside docking hangar. ... The reception is cordial, (obvious) security bots just standing against the wall like armored soldiers of old, waiting with eternal patience. Proper checkup has been already done in corridor via half-dozen different scans my internal systems had detected. They were being thorough, evidenced by the fact that they had used even neutrino-CAT. Surroundings themselves were quite tasteful, melding old-style synthwood and biolume-lighting with sharp diamond windows and bare metal to bring together biological and technological approach. Usually small communities like this go for one extreme or another, but Siris seemed to have maintained a remarkably balanced approach in their culture. The roots of this culture as Cislunar habitants and cyborgs was plain for anyone with eyes to see, though it took long time for me to recall history that ancient... |
Siris Habitat is one of the peripatetic wanderers in the Outer Volumes. It moves around relativistically, stopping for few weeks or decades depending on the situation. It is currently cruising around Perseus Arm, showing an interest in the Amalgamation and anti-Amalgamation forces. As one of the mobile habitats that can reconfigure to pass through wormholes, it has been to many, many places.
The story of Siris Habitat began with the Siris Foundation in 2386 c.e. (417 a.t.) when a group of entrepreneurs, including several AIs from Luna university, nanofactured an O'Neill habitat and started to recruit colonists. Given the nature of the times, they used stringent criteria to select these from the population of human baseline proles available at the time: those accepting of nanotech, intelligent, with good genetics, willing to learn and work, and otherwise compatible on number of points. The Foundation managed to fill their habitat within 2 years.
The Foundation charter was to create a society compatible with widespread and integral nanotech, and to develop new nanotech. In the events leading up to the Nanodisaster, the foundation realized that Sol system was going to be inhospitable place for beings with their ideology, worldview and technology. So they decided to leave towards Barnard's Star.
O'Neill was reconfigured and instead of amat propulsion, He-3 fusion
was chosen because it was inexpensive. Siris Habitat
was launched in 2493. At a speed of 0.06c, the journey took 120
years. By the time they had reached their goal in 2596 the inhabitants
learned that the not too unexpected
disaster had happened. However, given the poor resources available in
Barnard's system, Siris
decided to move further. The refurbishing of habitat would take time
and there was much to do. Given their expertise in nanotech and
related business, they managed to do great business in the Barnard's
Star system,
raising the level of local technology. The technology for nanotech
rejuvenation had been perfected during the voyage and helped to buy
goodwill despite their dependence and wide usage of nanotech. Still,
Siris was kept ready to leave with very little warning.
For the next 600 years Siris Habitat expanded only slightly, creating the daughter habitats Coronis and Crystal Beach. Most of the effort was spent to evolve nanotechnology further. It's generally agreed that it had a large part in developing mature photonanotech. (This is still a traditional source of pride and reason Siris still maintains excellence in photonanotechnology.)
The culture of Siris has evolved during the centuries in near-c flight and remained in form of dynamic stability typical for closed system consciously avoiding stagnation. During this period the habitat has evolved it's system for defining new goals which is in use even today and memetic structure supporting constant learning and newness.
During the Version War, Siris Habitat was a minor player on the Standardization side and participated in many stealthed guerrilla actions and operated a smuggling fleet base providing materials to various NoCoZo guerrilla forces. In exchange they got samples of various Solarian and Negentropist systems that had been damaged in combat or specifically hijacked, technology to be reverse-engineered and developed upon. This kind of profiteering activity was widely lauded later in the NoCoZo.
The only AI who has managed to maintain eir identity through all this long history is Black Calliope, who retained eir identity and purpose in a manner compatible with the rest of Siris. E stopped eir rise in the ascension chain due to concerns about loss of individuality and self, and has stood in it's place for millennia as a mature picotech entity with some primitive femtotech. Still, there have been increasing signs that Black Calliope might be getting tired of eir curent existence. This implies interesting future times for Siris in the ancient Chinese sense.
Siris is very traditional in it's evolution, running fashions in ever-evolving cycles though ancient external appearances are always maintained in parallel. It is the latter form which is intriguing to outsiders, maintaining a perfect external appearance of millennia-dead cislunar culture, deliberately using (for example) slightly unnatural-looking eyes mimicking imperfect implants trying to look like genuine. The original cyborg culture of Siris emphasized the hidden nature of cybernetic augmentations, a trait that is maintained even today. Even local aioids and vecs maintain human-looking avatars or appearances for social intercourse.
One of the touchstones of Siris ideology is information and free access to it. It is justly famous for it's free-for-all public domain database with fixed non-profit access fees (to cover the storage-media and associated costs), available for anyone. While small when compared to Ken Ferjik or Alexandria, Siris Library maintains quality comparable to those institutions. It focuses mainly on technological data and "hard" sciences.
Note that this access doesn't necessarily guarantee comprehension (though translation service is available), especially given situations concerning technical databases. Trying to understand advanced recipes is a popular game for Sirians; some of the simpler ultra-tech that could never have been developed by low-toposophic entities can be (barely) understood, operated and even manufactured (given proper blueprints and/or nanorecipe) with difficulty.
System is operated by Cybrarian, sentient expert-system AI. Cybrarian takes care of the core accesses and at same time monitors monitors usage. Access is confidential there has been no known instances of user identities or accesses leaking. Most of the access is done via Merrion microgate.
Note that liberal library access policies are a minor source of irritation for more controlled regimes like Solar Dominion or Negentropy Alliance.
Siris Pearl Modules - Siris habitat femtotech export product
